Erkenn (2012) 77:51–63 DOI 10.1007/s10670-011-9312-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Stop Asking Why There’s Anything Stephen Maitzen Received: 28 May 2010 / Accepted: 16 July 2011 / Published online: 14 August 2011 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011 Abstract Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? This question often serves as a debating tactic used by theists to attack naturalism. Many people apparently regard the question—couched in such stark, general terms—as too profound for natural science to answer. It is unanswerable by science, I argue, not because it’s profound or because science is superficial but because the question, as it stands, is ill-posed and hence has no answer in the first place. In any form in which it is well-posed, it has an answer that naturalism can in principle provide. The question therefore gives the foes of naturalism none of the ammunition that many on both sides of the debate think it does. 1 Introduction Why is there anything, rather than nothing at all? Leibniz called it ‘‘the first question that should rightly be asked’’ (1714, p. 527), and Heidegger called it not only ‘‘the fundamental question of metaphysics’’ but ‘‘the first of all questions’’ (1959, p. 1). Nowadays the question more commonly comes up as a debating tactic used by theists to attack naturalism. Many people apparently regard the question—couched in such completely general terms—as too profound for natural science to answer. It is unanswerable by science, I’ll argue, not because it’s profound or because science is superficial but because the question, as it stands, is defective, ill-posed, and hence has no answer. In any form in which it is a well-posed question, it has an answer that naturalism can in principle provide. The question therefore gives the foes of naturalism none of the ammunition that many on both sides of the debate think it does. In short, we ought to stop asking ‘‘Why is there anything?’’ The utterance is a pseudo-question if construed at face value and, at best, a tendentious way of asking S. Maitzen (&) Department of Philosophy, Acadia University, Wolfville, NS B4P 2R6, Canada e-mail: [email protected] 123 52 S. Maitzen other questions that are well-posed and answerable, in principle, by science. Better, then, to ask those other questions instead. My argument applies equally to variants of the same question that one also often sees, such as ‘‘Why is there something (rather than nothing) (at all)?’’ I don’t claim that my argument dissolves every question we might ask about the origin of the cosmos, only that we ought to stop asking various pseudo-questions about it that philosophers and ordinary folk commonly do ask. 2 The Context Naturalistic objectors to theism say that the state of today’s science makes us less in need of God to explain the workings of the universe than even Laplace was, who two centuries ago famously claimed no explanatory need for God at all. Naturalists point to the many phenomena we used to attribute to supernatural agents but can now explain scientifically: the change of seasons, the course of a disease, the orbits of planets, and on and on. Their theistic opponents often admit that natural science has discovered not only good piecemeal explanations of the existence of particular phenomena but even good integrated explanations of the existence and operation of entire systems. In this sense, the opponents concede that natural science can answer not only mechanistic ‘‘how’’ questions but also existential ‘‘why’’ questions, such as ‘‘Why are there penguins?’’ or ‘‘Why is there cancer?’’ Yet they hasten to point out that natural science hasn’t explained why there exists anything at all: not specific things or kinds of things but anything in the first place, anything in general. But what, more precisely, is this theistic challenge to naturalism? Pretty clearly the challenge isn’t to explain the existence of metaphysically necessary things, since in those cases there’s no contrasting state of affairs, no state of affairs in which they don’t exist, that could have obtained instead.1 Rather, the challenge is to explain the existence of contingent things, those things that didn’t have to exist, and even then only some contingent things. If the singleton set containing Mars exists, it exists contingently, since its only member exists contingently and sets owe their identity to their members. But if the set {Mars} exists, it exists abstractly, and presumably it’s not {Mars} the set but Mars the planet whose existence naturalism is expected to explain. In other words, the challenge to naturalism expressed in the question ‘‘Why is there anything?’’ doesn’t seem to rest on the assumption that theism explains the existence of abstracta better than naturalism does—especially because, if there are abstracta, then some of them (say, the integers or the law of noncontradiction) seem both uncreatable and independent of God. Instead, the challenge is meant to invoke only those contingent things that are also concrete, i.e., that exist in spacetime. Properly put, then, the challenge to naturalism is that natural science may do a fine job accounting for particular contingent, concrete things and kinds of things, but it isn’t equipped or even meant to tell us why any such things exist at all. 1 Philosophers, including Leibniz himself, typically interpret the ‘‘first question that should rightly be asked’’ as referring only to those things that could have failed to exist. See van Inwagen (1996, pp. 95–96) and O’Connor (2008) among the many recent treatments that interpret the question this way. 123 Stop Asking Why There’s Anything 53 Many philosophers have taken seriously the theistic challenge ‘‘Explain why there’s anything contingent and concrete at all’’ and have tried to answer it with metaphysical arguments.2 Other philosophers regard the challenge as well-posed but sufficiently met if natural science can explain the existence of each given contingent, concrete thing. Their spokesman is Hume’s Cleanthes: ‘‘Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.’’3 This latter group, however, faces opponents who say that a well-posed question remains even if science can provide each of those particular explanations: the question ‘‘Why are there these contingent, concrete things rather than none at all?’’ Their spokesman is Hume’s Demea: ‘‘The question is still reasonable, why this particular succession of causes existed from eternity, and not any other succession or no succession at all.’’4 It’s not just philosophers who take the theistic challenge seriously; so do some much more visible contributors to our culture. Even as battle-hardened a critic of theism as comedian Bill Maher, co-producer and star of the irreverent documentary Religulous, is stumped by the challenge and softens his position as a result. Plugging his documentary on an episode of CNN’s Larry King Live, Maher confessed the following about the existential questions allegedly answered by theism: [Y]ou just give yourself a headache thinking about them. I mean, if you start thinking about these things, you kind of get down to ‘‘Why is there anything?’’ Try to ponder that one afternoon if you’re not high…. See, there may be answers. I’m not saying that there isn’t something out there. I’m not strictly an atheist. An atheist is certain there’s no God. [Maher 2008] In the face of the challenge, then, some of the world’s most visible atheists think they need to disavow atheism and retreat to mere agnosticism. 3 Dummy Sortals and Pseudo-Questions But they needn’t. The question ‘‘Why is there anything?’’ deserves no reply, because it’s ill-posed for a reason that the following example, I believe, helps to 2 Recent examples include Goldstick (1979), Lowe (1996), van Inwagen (1996), Lowe (1998, ch. 12), Gru¨nbaum (2004), Rundle (2004), all of which give non-theistic answers; O’Connor (2008), which gives a theistic answer; and Parfit (1998), whose answer is harder to classify. I find it curious that Lowe takes seriously the challenge ‘‘Why is there anything?’’ given his many persuasive defenses of a sortalist ontology of the kind I’m using to dismiss the challenge as ill-posed (e.g., Lowe 1989, ch. 2). Taking the challenge seriously forces Lowe to defend two highly contentious claims: (i) infinitely many sets and natural numbers exist but, remarkably enough, not the empty set or the number zero; (ii) every possible world contains at least one concrete object, even if no concrete object exists in every possible world (Lowe 1998, pp. 254–255). For a sortalist like Lowe, (ii) implies that although there needn’t exist pens, or plums, or penguins (and so on, for every sortal), it’s metaphysically necessary that, at all times, there exists some concrete object or other belonging to some genuine kind. 3 Hume (1779, p. 66). Edwards (1967) endorses this position, as is well known. 4 Hume (1779, p. 64). Burke (1984) endorses this position, citing also Rowe (1975) as endorsing it. 123 54 S. Maitzen make evident. Hold a capped ballpoint pen in your otherwise-empty hand. Now consider the question ‘‘Exactly how many things are you holding in your hand?’’ You can’t answer the question if it’s posed in those terms. Are you supposed to count both the pen and its cap? The question, as posed, doesn’t imply one answer or the other.